Angel of Mercy & Standoff at Mustang Ridge

by Heather Graham

  “I’d heard rumors of that.” Royce paused a moment, waiting, and made an impatient circling motion with his fingers. He stooped, retrieved his Colt and slipped it back into the leather shoulder holster beneath his coat. He also put her gun in his pocket.

  “Travis said that he’d cover my father’s debts if I married him.” Now it was Sophie’s turn to pause. “He said he was in love with me and that he was willing to pay that price to have me.”

  Royce stared at her, and Sophie wished this meeting had been under different circumstances. She owed him a huge apology. Several of them, in fact.

  “Royce,” she muttered, her voice a whisper now. “I’m sorry.”

  “So you’ve said. It’s not helping with this explanation. I still don’t know what the heck is going on.”

  He gave her a scowl, the muscles stirring in a face that was far more handsome than she wanted it to be. Not that this would have been easier with a less attractive man, but those good looks—the coffee-brown hair and sizzling green eyes—had always unnerved her.

  Attracted her, too.

  Easy to attract in those cowboy-fit jeans, boots and Stetson. And it’d been that stupid attraction that had made her involve him in this equally stupid mess. Talk about a dangerous tangled web, and now she might have trapped Royce and her both in it.

  Royce made another of those impatient sounds, and Sophie continued with what she hoped would be good enough answers to get them moving. “I started to have second thoughts about marrying Travis,” she added. “He definitely wasn’t the decent, honest man my father said he was.”

  “So, to get out of a loveless marriage,” Royce concluded, his voice flat, “you told Travis we’d had sex and that you’re pregnant with my baby?”

  She nodded. It was more than that. Much more. But she instinctively knew that telling Royce all the details wasn’t a good idea, especially since it didn’t appear he was so furious with her that he was out to kill her.

  “We didn’t really have sex, did we?” he asked.

  Sophie took a deep breath, shook her head.

  Relief went through his eyes, and it wasn’t a small amount of it, either. “Good. Because I was drunker than I’d ever been in my life, and I shouldn’t have let things get that far.”

  “We didn’t have sex,” she snapped. “Now, just leave it at that, all right?”

  “All right,” he growled. “But Travis believes otherwise and he also believes we made a baby that night. Now he wants to kill us.”

  “Maybe,” she mumbled. But again, that was just a small piece of the story. She turned back to the window and tried to assure herself that she hadn’t been followed. “The reason I was trying to get out of the marriage was because I found out some things.”

  And here’s where her explanation would have to veer off. She couldn’t implicate her father in this.

  Sophie chose her words carefully. “I believe Travis was into some illegal activity, and I was in the process of working with an FBI agent to uncover that activity. I was copying files and sending them to him.”

  Selective files, but that was yet something else Sophie wasn’t about to tell a lawman who could, and would, arrest her father.

  “Last night Travis confronted me and said he thought I was betraying him because I’d been acting suspicious.” She glanced at Royce, ready to ask again if they could get moving, but he just motioned for her to continue. “I thought I’d settled his mind, but then after dinner, he confronted me again. He kept pushing for the truth, and the image of you flashed through my head.”

  Specifically, the image of them half-naked at the motel.

  But she kept that to herself.

  Best not to let Royce know that it was a particular image she couldn’t get out of her mind. Or her dreams.

  “And that’s when you lied?” he asked.

  She nodded, checked the window again. “More or less. I said I was pregnant with another man’s child, and Travis told me he’d seen pictures of you and me together.”

  “Pictures?” Royce flatly repeated.

  “I don’t know if Travis had them or not, and he didn’t show them to me. Maybe someone at the party at the Outlaw Bar took them.” Or maybe they’d been a bluff.

  “But these pictures convinced him that I’d gotten you pregnant.” He paused. “Hell, I’m guessing Travis didn’t take that news too well?”

  “He didn’t. He slapped me and stormed out.”

  Royce’s jaw muscles jerked, tightening even more. “You should have had his sorry butt arrested for hitting you.”

  She’d wanted to. Heck, she’d wanted to slap Travis right back, but Sophie hadn’t. Besides in Travis’s state of mind, he might have done a lot more than slap her.

  “I thought it was over, that Travis was out of my life,” Sophie continued. “Until this morning, that is. I got the call from the FBI agent.” Just saying it required a deep breath. “He said he’d gotten word from a criminal informant that someone had hired a hit man to go after you and that someone else had been hired to kidnap me.”

  Royce stood there, staring, with his forehead bunched up. It was a lot to take in. She’d had several hours and still hadn’t managed it.

  “I told the agent I was going to call you,” she continued when Royce didn’t say anything. “I wanted to warn you, but the agent said I shouldn’t.”

  “Really?” No more bunched-up forehead. Instead, Royce rolled his eyes and cursed. “And why is that? Why wouldn’t I need to know something like that?”

  “Because he thought you might be trying to kill me, too.”

  Royce’s cursing got worse. “Why the hell would you believe I’d want to kill you?”

  “Because the agent said Travis might have convinced you to do it.”

  In hindsight, it wasn’t a good reason, but it had made some sense at the time. In her terrified mind, Sophie had figured that Travis was angry enough to convince Royce that she’d trapped him into this pregnancy. Her fears hadn’t calmed a bit when Royce had shown up at the cabin with his gun aimed at her.

  “Why didn’t the FBI send someone to the ranch to protect you?” Royce asked. “And why the hell didn’t they call me or my brother to tell us what was going on?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking straight, and maybe the FBI had someone on the way. I’m not sure. Right after the phone call, I looked out the window and saw two men dressed all in black. They both had rifles.”

  After several more moments of his intense stare, some of the skepticism left Royce’s eyes. “You should have called me then and there.”

  “Maybe. But remember, I was still of the mind-set that you might want to do me in for ruining your life and getting you in hot water with Travis.”

  “I can handle Travis,” he snarled. “And later I’ll want to know why this FBI agent put such crazy ideas in your head.”

  Sophie wanted to know the same thing. Of course, she could have misinterpreted what the agent had said since she’d never been that scared in her life.

  “Why didn’t you just hide or yell for your father when you saw those two armed gunmen?” Royce asked. “Certainly, he’s got a ton of men around the ranch?”

  “Normally. But most are still on holiday break. Plus, he let some hands go because, well, to save money. I don’t know where my father and brother are, but I realized I was in the house alone. I got dressed, grabbed the Smith & Wesson and left.”

  He glanced at her gown, silently challenging that getting dressed part.

  “I partially dressed,” Sophie amended with a huff. “And I hurried out from the other side of the house so the men wouldn’t see me. I started running and ended up here.” She’d more or less stumbled her way to the cabin.

  Royce opened his mouth to say something, but then he cursed again when his phone bu
zzed. He jerked it from his coat pocket as if he’d declared war on it and looked at the screen.

  “Trouble?” she asked, holding her breath.

  “My brother. He’s just checking on me.” He replied to the text, and he shoved the phone back in his pocket. “I told him I was on my way back to town and that he was to send a deputy to your father’s ranch.” Royce looked at her. “You need to come with me to the sheriff’s office so I can take your statement.”

  A statement with more questions than answers. Had Travis really sent two gunmen to kidnap her because she’d told him she was pregnant with Royce’s child?

  Or was this about something else?

  “I’ll have Travis brought in for questioning, too,” Royce added. He went to the porch, motioning for her to stay back, and he looked around the area. Not an ordinary look. The thorough kind a cop would do.

  Finally, he motioned for her to follow him. “I’ll need to speak to this FBI agent, too. What’s his name?”

  “Keith Lott.”

  Royce repeated it as if trying to figure out if he’d heard it before. “How’d you meet him?”

  “He contacted me. Lott asked me to help him look into Travis’s business files, and since I was suspicious, I agreed to help him.”

  Plus, she wanted a way out of the marriage.

  “I’ll also need to talk to your father,” Royce insisted.

  Sophie went stiff. “He didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “There had to be a reason he wasn’t at the ranch this morning.”

  “But that reason has nothing to do with those two gunmen,” she countered.

  Royce made a skeptical sound. “I’ll still be questioning him. Can you walk down the ridge?” he asked before she could respond to that.

  “I’d crawl if it means getting out of here.”

  “Crawling’s not necessary, but I don’t want you falling. Those shoes aren’t exactly meant for trekking through snow and ice.”

  She nodded, knowing he was right, but she’d grabbed the first pair she could find. Sophie caught onto the back of Royce’s jacket as he led them out of the cabin. They both continued to keep watch.

  “Why aren’t you chewing me out because of the lie I told?” she whispered.

  He lifted his shoulder. “Desperate people do desperate things.”

  Yes, she had indeed been desperate. “I honestly didn’t think it would make Travis come after you. And me.”

  Royce didn’t respond to that. He kept trudging through the ice and snow that blanketed the trail, but she figured he was chewing her out in his mind.

  She certainly was.

  Mercy, she’d been so stupid to blurt that out and even more stupid to have agreed to the marriage in the first place. Of course, her father hadn’t given her much of a choice about the marriage.

  Soon, she’d have to figure out how to handle her father’s situation, too.

  Royce stopped so quickly that Sophie plowed right into him, and he turned, caught onto her to stop her from falling. She was about to ask him why he’d stopped, but he put his finger to his mouth in a “stay quiet” gesture.

  And he reached into his jacket and drew his gun.

  That robbed her of her breath, and her gaze darted around so she could see what had alarmed him. But Sophie didn’t see anything other than the winter landscape. Didn’t hear anything, either, but that wasn’t surprising since the wind was starting to howl now.

  Royce lifted his head just a fraction, and without warning, he latched on to her arm and threw her to the ground. The impact nearly knocked the breath right out of her.

  Sophie didn’t have time to ask why he’d done that, because she heard something. Someone was moving in the trees behind them. And that sound barely had time to register when the shot blasted through the air.

  3

  A dozen things went through Royce’s mind, but first and foremost was to get Sophie out of the line of fire. He dragged her behind the nearest tree. When he looked out, ready to return fire, he saw nothing.

  But someone was definitely out there.

  The shot was proof of that.

  Royce figured it was too much to hope that it was a hunter who’d fired a stray shot. No, he wasn’t that lucky. However, he wasn’t sure he believed all of Sophie’s story about hit men and kidnappers.

  That left her ex, Travis.

  Royce hardly knew the man since Travis had only moved to Mustang Ridge about a year ago, but maybe Travis was the sort who’d let his temper take him to a bad place when Sophie had told him about the fake pregnancy. If so, Travis was going to pay, and pay hard for this.

  A bullet slammed into the tree just inches from where Royce and Sophie were, and he pushed her even lower to the ground until her face was right against the snow.

  “I’m Deputy Sheriff McCall,” Royce shouted out just on the outside chance those two bullets hadn’t been meant for him.

  Another shot smacked into the tree.

  Well, that cleared up his outside chance theory that the shooter wasn’t trying to kill him or Sophie. Or both.

  “Travis?” Royce tried again. “If that’s you, we can settle this without me having to shoot you.”

  And there was no mistaking, Royce would take out whoever was doing this if he didn’t stop. Royce waited for an answer. No shot this time, but he did hear something else. Footsteps.

  And he cursed.

  Because from the sound of it, there wasn’t just one set but two. Hell. Had Sophie been right about those kidnapper–hit men being after her? If so, maybe the shots were meant to pin them in place so the men could sneak up on them, kill Royce and kidnap her.

  That wasn’t going to happen, either.

  “Stay down,” Royce growled when Sophie tried to lift her head.

  Sophie was shaking, and her teeth were still chattering, but Royce couldn’t take the time to reassure her. Not that he could have done that anyway since there was nothing reassuring about this mess. He had to focus every bit of his attention on those footsteps. Not easy to do with the wind rattling the bare tree branches and his own pulse making a crashing noise in his ears.

  A fourth shot zinged past Sophie and him.

  The angle was different, and using that angle, Royce tried to pinpoint the location of the shooter—directly ahead but moving slightly to the right. He hoped like the devil that it didn’t mean the second one was going to the left, but it’s what his brother and he would do if they were trying to close in on someone they wanted to capture.

  Royce made a quick peek around the cottonwood and saw a blur of motion as the gunman ducked behind another tree. Mercy, the guy was getting close, and that probably meant the one on his blind side was, too.

  He reached behind him with his left hand and pulled out the Smith & Wesson that he’d gotten away from Sophie earlier. Without taking his attention off the woods, he dragged her to a sitting position and put the gun in her hand.

  “Watch that direction,” he said, tipping his head to the right. He positioned her so that his body was still shielding her as much as possible. “If you see one of the men, don’t hesitate. Shoot.”

  It wasn’t a stellar plan, especially since Royce had no idea if Sophie had any experience with firearms. Plus, she was still shaking, and that wouldn’t help her aim.

  But he didn’t have a choice.

  They could both die if one of the gunmen managed to ambush them. Too bad he hadn’t told his brother to send out backup, but until that first shot had been fired, Royce hadn’t known that things were going from bad to worse.

  He didn’t have a lot of extra ammunition so he couldn’t just start firing warning shots, but Royce waited, trying to time it just right for the best impact. He listened to the sound of that movement on his left. Honed in on
it. Aimed.

  And fired.

  Royce’s shot blistered through the winter air, and it slammed into something. Not into a man from the sound of it, but the footsteps and shuffling around stopped. Royce could have sworn everything stopped because things suddenly became eerily still.

  The seconds crawled by, and because Sophie’s arm was right against his, he could feel her tense muscles. Her breathing became shallow, too. Royce risked glancing at her just to make sure she was all right. She looked exactly as he’d expected her to look.

  Terrified.

  But her eyes seemed more focused, and she had a solid grip on the gun.

  “McCall?” someone shouted.

  Royce didn’t answer. He just waited to see what would happen next, but it was a little unnerving to hear this killer wannabe use his name.

  “We don’t want you,” the shooter added a moment later. “We want the woman. Let her go, and we won’t hurt you.”

  Right.

  They wouldn’t kill a lawman, the only witness to their crime of kidnapping? Plus, there was that whole disturbing part about what these bozos planned to do with Sophie. Royce doubted they had friendly intentions.

  But Sophie moved to get up anyway.

  Royce cursed and shoved her right back down. He gave her a “what the heck are you doing?” look.

  “They want me, not you,” she mouthed.

  He gave her another look, a scowl, to let her know she was wrong about that. “They shot at us,” Royce reminded her in a whisper.

  And the gunmen no doubt wanted to fire more of those shots at point-blank range. Royce had no intentions of dying in these woods today and allowing Sophie to be taken God knows where so that Travis could do God knows what to her.

  Royce risked another peek around the tree, but the gunman he’d seen earlier was nowhere in sight.

  “McCall!” the man shouted again. “Hand her over to us. This ain’t your fight.”

  Yeah, it was, and it had become his fight the exact second that first shot had been fired. Or maybe even earlier when he’d walked in on Sophie in the cabin. Either way, Royce wasn’t backing down.